IIS has created a software solution for automated file verification to ensure that file content conforms to published format specifications. The approach has to ability to quickly process one or more files and determine the format(s) of data contained in the file(s). The output can be used to directly process the data in the file or can be used as the input to a system which performs metadata tampering/validation steps and malware/virus/content tampering detection. The solution may be used as a standalone file validator or may be used as part of a larger data processing system.